CPU, APU & Chipsets Posts - Page 18

We are still four or five months away from the launch of Haswell, Intel's next generation CPU architecture, and that puts us at a minimum of three to four months from seeing reviews begin popping up, right? Russian overclocking site OCLab.ru has posted what appear to be the first benchmarking results from a Haswell part. The results are interesting.

An Intel Haswell B0 stepping that was clocked at 2.8GHz was used, and they compared it to an Ivy Bridge clocked at 2.8GHz. The Haswell finished a Super PI 32M run in 11:27, while the Ivy Bridge completed the run in 11:49. And a WPrime 1024M run was completed by Haswell in 07:11.181 and the Ivy Bridge finished in 07:11.8.

As with every "leaked" bit of information, we must be careful not to read much into it. If these really are genuine Haswell results then Haswell is looking pretty good so far. Our sources have told us that we should read very little into this as if this is true, it is a very early engineering sample and the results might not be indicative of true Intel Haswell performance, as things such as drivers may not yet be fully optimized. If you would like to see the rest of the results, visit source #2 below.

Specifications for AMD's upcoming Richland APU processors have leaked online. The Richland series of APUs will follow the current Trinity desktop APUs that are currently available and will continue to use the 32nm lithography process currently employed. The new chips will offer about 8 percent better performance than Trinity.

The full specifications are listed out in the chart above. The chips offer a 300MHz boost in base clock speed across the entire range. Turbo speeds are also increased and the boost ranges from 200-400MHz. AMD managed to boost these clock speeds, all while remaining in the same 65W and 100W TDPs present on Trinity.

The unlocked K-series processors are the only ones to feature the 100W TDP. Integrated graphics remain based upon the 6000-series GPU, even though they feature numbers in the 8000 range. Reports say that the Richland APUs are already in the hands of system builders, so we could be seeing a release of these parts soon.

A CPU has popped up on Ebay that the seller claims is either Ivy Bridge EP or Haswell EP. The seller says that it fits in his LGA 2011 motherboard, though the system does not boot up. Ivy Bridge EP is said to be a drop-in upgrade to LGA 2011 motherboards, though they will need an update for the BIOS before it will work.

From the post:

A Brand NEW Chip.

Says Q1DF in Qspec Code on the CPU cap.

Got this chip by chance, and I know It is either of Haswell-EP chip or Ivy Bridge-EP.

No further info is known unfortunately.

It fits to my LGA2011 socket very well but never boots up.

No power signal on the board.

The price is currently at $202.50 with $15 for shipping. Technically, this chip is property of Intel and they probably won't be happy with it being sold. That said, if you think you can get the chip to boot up on your system, you can find the auction on Ebay.

Intel has pushed the 22nm microarchitecture Ivy Bridge down into the budget line of processors. Launching seven new CPUs, Intel has finally transitioned the Celeron line from the older Sandy Bridge architecture to the latest and greatest. However, this transition comes just a few months before the release of Intel's next architecture, Haswell.

With the change, performance of these lines are improved. All of the new chips feature two cores and two threads, save for the new Core i3-3210, which features 4 threads via HyperThreading. Prices for the new chips start at $42 and run all the way up to $117 for the Core i3 model.

All of the processors are supported by existing LGA 1155 motherboards. If you're in need of a new budget CPU, Intel now has you covered with the latest architecture, though it won't remain the latest for much longer.

Intel's fourth generation processors, Core Haswell, missed an expected CES launch, but word on the street is that we will see Haswell at Computex Taipei later this year.

As it turns out the official launch of the processor line has been set for June with a press conference taking place just a few days ahead of Computex Taipei 2013, the largest tech trade show in Asia. The press conference will announce the processors downstream partners and maybe layout the new processor line.

The Haswell architecture is designed specially to optimize the power savings and performance benefits from the move to FinFET transistors on the improved 22nm process node. Intel is optimistic about the new chips, estimating them to make up 14-16 percent of its CPU shipments by the end of Q3 2013.

Intel's Haswell chip is sure to surprise most this year, but how does its new integrated graphics power fare up at the moment? With all of the CES hoopla now close to finishing, we're beginning to see some things we didn't quite expect.

A video posted by The Tech Report shows off two systems - with one system featuring a Haswell-based Intel chip with integrated graphics, while the second system included an Ivy Bridge-based Core i7 CPU and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU. Dirt 3 was used at 1920x1080 with all details set to high.

CES 2013 - Here I am thinking Samsung would save the bigger announcements for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month, but the South Korean electronics giant has unveiled their 8-core processor known as Exynos 5 Octa.

Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa is based on ARM's new big.LITTLE technology which switches between two clusters of four cores each. The two clusters come in the form of an ARM Cortex-A15 processor used for performance, and a Cortex-A7 which will handle the common tasks which will provide better battery life.

At the moment, processors can change frequency and voltage on-the-fly, which provides better battery life, or higher performance depending on the task at hand. This new Exynos 5 Octa isn't the first chip that sports separate cores for heavy and light workloads, but the South Korean company are saying that they can cut power consumption by up to 70% compared to their Exynos 5 Dual, all by being able to take on common jobs with the lower-voltage A7 cores.

CES 2013 - Broadcom announced something that most people would usually look past thanks to its name, but the BCM7445 features some very impressive abilities.

The new processor from Broadcom is designed for Internet-connected video devices, and is one of the first to support the new video compression technology otherwise known as H.265, MPEG-5 and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding). The new chip is the successor to the hugely popular H.264 standard, also known as AVC and MPEG-4 Part 10.

H.265 brings some cool new tech, where it can firstly match the quality of H.265 yet use just half the network bandwidth - which will improve streaming video at the same data rate or reduce network usage at the same quality. The Broadcom BCM7445 also supports UltraHD video, which pushes four times as many pixels onto displays without even getting into image quality improvements through the roof.

CES 2013 - Intel, at their press conference, confirmed the existence of 7 watt TDP Ivy Bridge Core chips, as we previously reported they would. The chips are shipping and Lenovo and others have agreed to use them in upcoming designs.

Intel really provided no other details than the fact that they were aiming for a 10 watt TDP and managed to get down to 7 watts instead.

CES 2013 - Alright, Qualcomm - settle down, you're blowing me away here, ok? Most people expected Qualcomm to release the Snapdragon S5 at CES, but it looks like that won't be happening.

Don't be upset, though, because we still have some new chips to get all hot and bothered over - with the new SoCs arriving as the Snapdragon 600 and 800. These new SoCs will be baked into future high-end smart devices, such as Smart TVs, smartphones and tablets. We should expect the new Snapdragon 600 and 800 SoCs in the next three-to-six months, with both of the new chips sporting some pretty incredible specifications.

The Snapdragon 800 is claiming that it is 75% faster than the Snapdragon S4 Pro, which is quite the claim. If we do see these types of performance gains, it'll be thanks to a shift to 28nm HPm (High Performance for mobile) fabrication process, an upgraded Hexagon V5 digital signal processor, a shift over to 800MHz LPDDR3 memory which should compete against the PC-like bandwidth that Samsung will enjoy with Exynos 5, an all-new Krait 400 architecture which will offer clock speeds ramping up to 2.3GHz and an all-new Adreno 330 GPU that will sport double the computer power.